Changing the properties of the selection

[jameslbirke]

In paint shop Pro you can select a portion of your image and make changes (brightness – contrast, sharpen, histogram, etc.). I've put a rectangular marquee around a portion of my image but, any changes that I make, affect the entire image. Am I using the wrong procedure to do this? If so, can someone tell me the correct way?

Jim Birke

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Jim.

It sounds as though you’re working on an ‘Image’ layer, which is treated as a single object. If you want to work at the pixel level (e.g. making changes to a selected region of the image) you need to convert it to a ‘Pixel’ layer. To do this, go to the Layers panel, right-click the layer in question and choose the ‘Rasterize...’ option on the context menu.

[jameslbirke]

After I'm done with my changes, can I convert the image back to a background layer? I think I would have to do this before I could cut and paste a portion of this image on to another image. That doesn't seem to work with a pixel layer.

Jim Birke

[Alfred]

Please describe your workflow, together with an indication of where and how things don’t turn out as you expect. It might be helpful if you could share your *.afphoto file here.

[jameslbirke]

The image I'm working on is a scanned architectural drawing. JPG, 200 DPI, and  measuring 18 x 60". I rasterized it and there is now a layer called background (pixels) which I have selected. I now make a selection of the area that I want to improve and make all of my adjustments in it. Now I want to copy that selection and and paste onto a new image.

I Make sure that the background (pixels) is selected and then click CTRL C. I then open the tab containing the new image and hit CTRL V. The image appears but without any of the adjustments I made to it. I'm a Newbie with this particular software so I'm probably doing this all wrong. Maybe you can help.

The documentation included in this software lacks any sort of detail pertaining to this issue.

Jim Birke

[Old Bruce]

Are you making your adjustments with adjustment layers? If so you would have to flatten all the layers or to put it in Affinity speak Merge Visible. Do this with the menu Layers > Merge Visible. You can also do this with a right click in the layers panel.

Then select that new layer to copy. The adjustment layers are not affecting the background layer in any permanent manner and they can be changed, even the mask can be altered.

[jameslbirke]

The learning curve just keeps getting steeper. I cut and pasted a selection of my original image into a new image. On it I opened the "background (pixels)" layer and then started by selecting the portion I wanted to fix and making my my adjustments in it. Everything was going along fine until I was attacked by gremlins and I could no longer adjust anything.
I resigned myself to the idea that I might have to start out with another new image. In desperation I clicked on the layers tab and deleted all of the layers until the image disappeared. I undid the last delete and looked at the layers there was a layer simply called "pixels".
I opened it and was able to continue making adjustments on my image. From time to time I looked at the layers tab and I noticed that there were layers with titles corresponding to the tools I had been using added to it.
I'm thinking, (not my strong suit), that all of the layers on my new image copied over from my original image. Anyway, I'm making a note of this procedure.

Jim Birke

BTW. Thank you all for putting up with my questions and offering your assistance.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, jameslbirke said:

I'm thinking, (...), that all of the layers on my new image copied over from my original image.

More than likely. You have to work sometimes to not get that happening.